Description:Evolutionary theory suggests that the behavior of animals, including humans, is shaped by biological drives like survival and reproduction. These drives influence the way we interact on both the personal and the cultural levels. In addition, culture itself has imperatives that exert pressures on human behavior. Evolutionary psychology looks at how the culture we live in can be as much of an factor in human development as the genes we receive from our parents. In this course, we look at milestones in the human lifespan (including parent-child relationships, family interactions, mate choice, illness, and social interactions such as friendship and violence) and possible explanations from an evolutionary perspective.